


Stains

by sariane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariane/pseuds/sariane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Tonks just needs to feel, but she doesn't understand how to grasp emotion anymore, in the same way that’s she’s lost touch in molding her features into shape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stains

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic while trying to explore Remus and Tonks' relationship during Half-Blood Prince.
> 
> This story deals with death, mortality, and depression. While I can't say that I understand all of the things Tonks experiences, I hope I've portrayed her fairly.

Sometimes Tonks just needs to _feel_ , but she doesn't understand how to grasp emotion anymore, in the same way that’s she’s lost touch in molding her features into shape.

“I am an adult,” she whispers to herself in the bathroom mirror each morning. Maybe it will make her feel better. Maybe it will allow her to take control again.

Nothing happens, even as she focuses on her reflection like a lifeline. The mirror mutters something at her that she can’t make out; the Silencing Charm she cast months ago is wearing off.

“An adult,” she says firmly, but she doesn’t feel it. She doesn’t feel young either.

She’s supposed to feel like an adult by now, she thinks, but she doesn’t. Not when she wakes up in the morning in her own little flat in Hogsmeade. It’s more of a room with a bathroom attached, but it’s still hers; peeling paint, plaster, strange stain under the rug and all. It’s hers, and she pays for it, but it doesn’t make her feel mature when she slips the galleons into the envelope for the landlord.

She doesn’t feel as though she’s grown at all, not when she makes tea, or cooks meals, or attends Order meetings. She supposes this is all a process, like losing the bubblegum pink of her hair and throwing out her band t-shirts.

She doesn’t feel much, but she tries.

“I’m responsible,” she says in a wavering voice one morning, “I am a responsible—“

“Come on, dear,” the mirror says in a warped voice. “That’s the spirit.”

Shocked, she backs into the door behind her and grabs for her wand.

“Silencio!” she tries, but the mirror just sighs at her. “Silencio!”

Nothing.

She slides down to the cold floor and lays her cheek against the grey tiles.

Maybe, if she lays here long enough, her skin will turn like a chameleon’s and she’ll blend right in.

*

Sirius died right in front of her. Tonks never knew him very well, just his barking laugh and the mischievous glint in his eye. He always seemed so immortal to her as a child, laughing beside his friends and riding his flying motorbike. She peeked out onto the front porch to watch him talking to her mum, until one of his friends would spot her and chide her from her hiding spot. Tilting her head to the side as she looked up at them, they’d ruffle her hair and call her Dora.

“That crazy boy,” her mum had muttered as she put Nymphadora to bed one night, “he’ll land himself in trouble one of these days.”

Sirius was dead. He died, right before her eyes, right after her duel with Bellatrix Lestrange (her _aunt_ , who she tries not to think about). She always liked him, but she didn’t know him. Tonks doesn’t understand why she dreams of him falling through the veil, why she’ll think of him in the middle of making breakfast and feel tears prick to her eyes. He isn’t her friend to mourn.

Still, the world is cold when she wakes up. It’s a promise of tedium and unavoidable apathy that swells up inside her when she patrols the Hogwarts grounds. Tonks takes her breaths one at a time, cherishing the freezing air that fills her up.

Sirius had left everything to Harry, hadn’t he. He had someone – something to hold on to. She doesn’t.

One day, she leaves the grounds and steps quietly through the castle to find Dumbledore (this is the hallway where Marie had jinxed Joseph's legs together; where Liz had tried to duel her in 6th year over Stanley – but the memories can't even make her smile), and runs into Remus Lupin instead.

"What are you doing in the castle?" he says, and she swallows guiltily. She had had a purpose, she is sure of it, but Lupin tilts his head at her and takes her by the arm. His hands are warm. "Come on," he leads her away, just as students' voices begin to echo off the empty hallways and her empty head.  
 

*

"I've never been in here before," she looks around at the warm little room with its few battered tables and tea-stained doilies. A small bookcase sits in the corner, and a potted plant sits atop it, crooning a song to itself.

"It's the teacher's tea room," he supplies, ringing a bell. A few moments later, a house elf appears with a tea service, eyeing Tonks warily. "Thank you, Winky," he says quietly. She curtsies and disappears with a loud crack. Suddenly Tonks remembers that Lupin was a teacher here, and definitely feels her age.

"Won't they need it?" she asks, looking around. He adds sugar and milk to his tea and shakes his head.

"They'll all be at lunch," he answers. She shrugs and takes some tea for herself, not bothering with the sugar or milk. There are biscuits, but she leaves them. The silence weaves around them, around her, and she slips into it like a comfortable blanket. She sips her tea. She breathes. She watches Lupin pick at a threadbare patch of his tweed robes and wonders, _who has tweed robes, anyways_?

He sighs heavily and sets down his tea.

"When did it start?" he asks her suddenly, and she understands why, because what else could he possibly be talking about.

"The battle. At the Ministry," she says -- why shouldn't she tell him? -- and takes a sip of her plain tea.

"When--"

"When he died, yeah," she says, more softly now. Lupin is good at hiding things, especially pain, but still, the tips of his fingers from go white when he squeezes his teacup slightly. "Sorry," she whispers, but she isn't.

"And you--"

"Why do you care?" she sets down her cup and tea spills over, but the thing is too damn delicate anyways. "You're the one that lost him, and why do you care about _me_?" It's not until she puts the two facts together out loud that she can finish the sum, and she eyes Lupin warily. He doesn't look hurt but his knuckles are white, now, too, and Tonks swears under her breath. "I didn't even… _know him_ , not properly," she looks down at the stained table, at the tea soaking through some painstakingly made white doily and ruining the crispness of it.

"Just because there are others in pain doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to feel it," he answers, and she looks up again.

"Damn," she swears out loud, unintentionally. "You really are the intellectual." He doesn't smile, but she wants to at the skeptical look on his face.

"You might not see it now, Tonks, but there will be a better time for you," he says, ruining the moment slightly with his pseudo-therapist talk. Tonks wants to spit something back at him, fight for herself, but finds herself caught on the idea that she _wants_ to defend herself instead. She blinks.

"W-what?" she stutters stupidly, and there it is again, The Sigh.

"Death is hard," he says with the air of a man who knows this all too well. "It is a fact of life that it must end eventually for all," he continues, looking at the stain she's made on the doily. He picks up a napkin and begins to sop up the tea. "It's nothing to be afraid of."

"I'm not afraid of death," Tonks answers, watching the brown tea mar the white napkin. It’s a lie.

"Then what do you think is bothering you?" he asks next. She struggles for words, for feeling, for something, deep down, and scrapes up guts and an old burning sensation and finally thinks 'what the hell, nothing can hurt me now.'

"I realized," Tonks starts slowly, "that there is no one to lose _me_." She feels like she should be crying, like there should be tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and a dry lump in her throat. Instead, there is Remus Lupin, clutching a tea cup and looking at her with pity apparent on his face.

"Tonks," he says softly, "you _are_ loved, you know."

"Really?" she chokes out, but can't think of anything further to say that is snappy and rebellious and everything she used to be. "But I’m not…I’m not worth it. I’m not, not like _him_. He had you, he had Harry, he had someone and someone had him." She doesn't mean to say it, but it spills from her, the tea from the cup, her words dirty and dank on whatever silent purity she used to have. "I'm nobody."

"You are you," he says, and she wonders if he's going to burst into song or something. "You aren't gone, you're Nymphadora Tonks. You are Dromeda and Ted's sparky, spunky little girl who grew up brave and joined the Aurors and the Order. That sure as hell is someone, I think." There is fire in Remus' eyes, there is a fight, and Tonks wants to fight back at him.

"But I'm not--" It's a losing battle, of course, but it's a battle, and he's fighting for _her_. “What’s the point of fighting them if we can’t win? What’s the point of giving our lives if we won’t make a difference? Who am I supposed to be in this war?”

“No one’s asking you to give your life,” Remus replies, “we are fighting for ourselves, for the children, for our freedom.”

“But what happens if I end up alone?” she whispers.

“You will never be,” he reaches forward to take her hand, “you have me.”

It isn’t much, but it’s something.

"A long time ago," he starts, a new emotion in his eye taking over, and he finishes quietly, "someone told me that I wasn't defined by what I couldn't control, but rather what I choose to do because of it."

"What am I supposed to choose from?" she looks at him, expecting answers and experience, but he only stares blankly back at her.

"That's for you to decide. It's your life, and you've come so far. Things will change, you’ll see," he reaches across the table and grips her arm tightly. She cherishes the warmth of his hand through her robes for a moment, and then it's gone, and Remus Lupin is standing up, his teacup drained. She looks down at the cold dregs of her tea as she rises to her feet.

“You lost them,” she observes softly. “I didn’t think, I’m sorry, but you lost them all in one go.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he says, shaking his head. “It was never a clean cut. It never is. It still heals, though.” He turns the corner of his mouth up at her. “Come on.”

The flagstones echo underneath her shoes as Remus escorts her out of the castle and back to Hogsmeade. She isn't sure why he stays with her. He doesn't say anything or make any promises. She stops at her door and tilts her head at him like she used to, trying to see through his eyes and past the façade he has there. _People never air laundry in front of windows,_ she thinks, _Remus Lupin especially._

Feeling like a child, Tonks pecks him on the cheek before leaving him on the doorstep.


End file.
